ESCONDIDO ELEMENTARY STUDENTS LEARNING BY DOING

Fifth-graders create their own projects, aid critical thinking

What might have seemed a little like a show-and-tell session this week at Oak Hill Elementary School in Escondido was actually a glimpse at how children will learn under new federal education standards.

“This is based on a book?” one student asked fifth-grader Yuvia Cabrera on Tuesday after watching a video Yuvia made that was inspired by “Firegirl,” a novel by Tony Abbott.

Another student asked Yuvia where she could find the video on YouTube. Across the room, other students asked their classmates about short films, three-dimensional displays and other projects they had made.

It might not have seemed like a groundbreaking educational exercise, but after years of focusing on lectures and tests, the idea of students teaching students through project-based learning is somewhat revolutionary.

“We just came out of an era when were we told exactly what to teach, how to teach, what the responses should be, and to model, model, model it to them,” said Oak Hill teacher Diane DeWindt, referring to No Child Left Behind. “The result was they didn’t discover anything, and if they didn’t have time to learn it, we had to move on.”

A new federal education standard, Common Core, will attempt to create greater critical-thinking skills with relevant lessons for students, and schools are preparing to do more project-based learning to meet the goals.

All 150 fifth-graders at Oak Hill were asked to create a project on something they are passionate about. After working on the idea for three weeks, they created their projects on their own or in teams Friday and presented them to fourth- and fifth-graders at the school Tuesday.

“I’d say it’s the difference between learning and understanding,” fifth-grade teacher Joey Benson said about how classroom lectures compare to project-based assignments.

“When you come across a problem, you have to actively think of how to solve that,” he said. “You’re getting your fingers dirty. You’re trying and failing and coming up with solutions.”

In project-based and problem-based learning, students are asked to research a topic they are studying and create a project — or address a problem — associated with it.

Educational experts say the exercises give students “ownership” of the knowledge they acquire. Because they must understand their subject well enough to talk about it with other students, they retain what they learned longer than they otherwise would if they merely had to take a test, educators say.

Benson was among 10 fifth-grade teachers who went to the Computer-Using Educators conference in Palm Springs in March, where he said he got the idea of an “innovative day,” where all fifth-graders would create projects about something they are passionate about.

“At our school, we have a good amount of technology,” he said. “What if we gave our kids one day to work on being creative? It’s something in education we never do. We never give them opportunities to really be creative, to do problems where they’re on their own.”

The projects were not graded, but were intended to give both students and teachers an idea about how to use projects-based learning.